iPhone 5c

Announced alongside the iPhone 5s in September 2013, the iPhone 5c ($0 on contract from the Apple Store) is currently Apple’s entry-level iPhone. Made with a plastic rear shell and a glass face, it is effectively a repackaging of the iPhone 5, seemingly designed to create differentiation with the highly similar-looking iPhone 5s.

The iPhone 5c continues to use the A6 chip, 8 megapixel camera, and 4-inch Retina display found in the iPhone 5, but modestly improves the front-facing FaceTime HD camera, adds support for more LTE bands, and increases the color choices from two to five. Apple chose a basic white, as well as somewhat faded green, blue, pink, and yellow tones. Every version has a black front.

One thing that the iPhone 5c’s new shell offers is durability: the glossy plastic rear shell is not as easy to accidentally scuff or shatter as the metal and glass iPhone 5 it replaces. On the other hand, Apple only offers it now in an 8GB capacity, which is too little space to store apps, music, and video at the same time. As it’s currently sold, the iPhone 5c is designed to be a very basic phone for first-time iPhone users, as well as something to get people in the doors to choose something better. We wouldn’t recommend it over any other current-generation iPhone unless you only plan to use it for communications, very small apps, and video streaming — not storage.

Although watchOS 4 doesn’t drop support for any Apple Watch models, the new iOS 11 software update will not be available for the iPhone 5 and iPhone 5c. This likely means Apple Watch users with either of those models will need to upgrade to a newer iPhone to update to watchOS 4.

The stylus market was shaken up last fall with Apple’s first-party entrance into the race with the Apple Pencil, which works in concert with special sensors in the iPad Pro display for pixel-accurate recognition. This left third-party stylus accessory manufacturers in a quandary — how can they compete with the officially-endorsed Apple Pencil?

The Pixel stylus is the answer from Adonit, on sale today for $79.99. Not only is Adonit’s stylus $20 cheaper than Apple’s, it has a huge advantage in terms of iOS device compatibility. It’s the closest you’ll get to an Apple Pencil for an iPhone, or an Apple Pencil for iPad that isn’t a Pro model.

In a new report, Reuters this evening is claiming that the FBI paid less than $1 million for the tool it used to unlock the San Bernardino gunman’s iPhone 5c. Apple, of course, denied to create a tool to do so, so the FBI went through a third-party to gain access. The report, citing “several U.S. government sources,” further claims that the technique can be used on any iPhone 5c running iOS 9.

Microsoft is bringing its predictive Windows Phone keyboard, called Word Flow, to the iPhone. The third-party keyboard is now available for free in the US App Store. The keyboard features traditional keycap input as well as the popular swiping-between-letters gesture input method popularized by Swype.

CNN today reports that while the FBI did not find anything new on the San Bernardino iPhone 5c that it unlocked without Apple’s help, it has “produced data the FBI didn’t have before.” Essentially, not finding anything new on the device is what the FBI needed to know in order to answer some of its remaining questions regarding the case.

Just over a week ago, the FBI revealed that it had successfully unlocked the iPhone 5c used by one of the San Bernardino gunmen without the help of Apple. To this day, the FBI has not publicly disclosed the method it used to gain access, and it’s unclear if it ever will. The National Journal, however, reports today that the FBI has been briefing members of the Senate on how it was able to gain access to the locked iPhone.